It seems we’re back at the end of another year and I have failed miserably to blog… again.

But what a year it’s been – we travelled to Australia (which was epic!), we’ve watched friends get married and others welcome new life into the world. I’ve been studying, I’m 2 units into my diploma in strategic marketing and our puppy love has continued to bring joy into our lives.

I’ve been reading about Gretchen Rubin’s 18 things in 2018 list of things to achieve and it inspired me to try and come up with things I want to accomplish in 2019 – not resolutions so much as targets. I did a similar thing with my 30 by 30 list, and whilst I didn’t complete the list I did more than if I didn’t have the list. My goals for 2019 are:

Finish (and pass) my diploma

Save £500 in Bodyshop commission

Save our house deposit

Run 10k in November with Vicky

Do a park run

Learn to do eyeliner

Learn to do brush lettering

Save some money so I can treat myself in the post Christmas sales

Do an escape room

Have an adventure!

Have a spa day with Kaz

Regular date nights with hubby

Blog more regularly – ideally a post a month

Set up, and start using, my Monzo card

Go somewhere I’ve never been before

Try and reduce my use of single use and disposable plastic and other single use items

Get better at recycling and reduce food waste

Do my best to be positive and find something positive in every day – I will do my best to write this down every evening before bed

Try to regularly switch off the tv in the evening and do something else (Dave and I have talked about this regularly – we’re going to attempt no-TV Thursday evenings!)

Some of these need a bit of explanation, some are pretty straightforward, all are things I’d really like to do, and will help make 2019 a pretty good year.

We had proper weather here today, which is a rather unusual (if rather British!) thing to be able to say. The “beast from the east” as it has been called hit Norfolk with a snow storm, and boy did it hit.

I decided against attempting to drive in. As a not very confident driver I didn’t feel it was worth the stress, especially having read all of the posts on our local community pages about the roads being impassable. Of course, a sensible person WOULD HAVE BOUGHT HER LAPTOP HOME! But I did not! Thankfully I could at least access my emails remotely and I’ve made a good start on a piece of admin work I’ve struggled to do in the office. But the whole situation has made me decide I shall take my laptop backpack to work and bring my laptop home every day. You never know when something like this is going to happen, and I am one of the lucky ones at my office who gets a laptop, I’m going to use it.

Puppy adores the snow and we had great fun tramping around the forest with him at lunchtime, the snow literally came up to his belly and he dived into it on multiple occasions. The sheer joy pouring off him was something to behold.

So, that is my report on UK snow. Nothing much to see here, well, a lot of the white stuff, and hopefully tomorrow will be a little safer and I can get into the office.

Music has always been pretty important in my life, growing up the radio was always on and I had a knack for knowing what the song was going to be within a few notes.

I joined the church choir when I was 10, and sang in some glorious places in the following 8 years. I’m not a fantastic singer (singing lessons are on my wish list!) but singing makes my heart happy! These days my singing is pretty much confined to the car, but I harbour a not-so-secret desire to sing properly again.

When my parents got together they combined their record (vinyl) collections and one area they overlapped heavily was soul and Motown. If I had to pick a favourite genre I’d be hard-pushed to choose anything else other than this, it’s ingrained in my life, so many happy memories. I even had my hen do at a local soul and Motown night!

But I don’t want to talk about soul music today. Today I want to talk about country music.

I’m not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I’d go the other way, my knowledge of country music is tiny, but boy does it make me happy. It also reminds me, happily, of my beautiful mumma. Country was all hers!

I’ve been listening to a compilation album “Now that’s what I call country” or something similar… it’s what I’m listening too sat on the bus this morning actually! I have to stop myself singing along (apologies if something slips out people of Norwich!).

But the reason I want to mention any of this. Is because it got me thinking, country music is “mine”. Hubby and I share a lot of music, I generally defer to his better taste and stronger opinion, but we like a lot of the same stuff, and he’s introduced me to some great music. But he’s not as much of a fan as I am of this kind of stuff. So at the moment my country album is on in the car, on the bus or when I’m doing something on my own. And that’s good, it makes time go quicker in the car and makes me smile, sing and generally feel good. It also helps the cleaning (when I do it!) go quicker!

I probably won’t ever see much live country music, but maybe one day, I’d quite like to see Nashville too!

I suppose there isn’t much of a message to this blog post, it’s more of a love letter to the Stetson wearing purveyors of my current favourite earworms! Tomorrow I’ll probably be rocking my inner rock chick and leaving the cowboy boots at home.. but what is that they say? A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll? I’m glad to be both, and to have re-found the country music to listen to!

Well, dear reader, there is lots I need to tell you about my life in 2018, I’ve not blogged properly in years, but I promised my hubby (that is one of the things that I need to tell you about!) that I would use my new iPad to blog more regularly!

So here I am, blogging on my iPad.

The hubby part? After 14 years the lovely Dave and I got married in November…

It was a beautiful, happy, emotional day, we were surrounded by our wonderful friends and family. There were people who couldn’t be there, but all in all it was just perfect.

2018 adventures

We didn’t take a “honeymoon” after our wedding, we took a week away in north Norfolk with waffle which was wonderful. Our honeymoon proper will happen this year… we’re going to Australia!

I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am! Right now we are in operation save some pennies and lose some weight mode! I joined slimming world to help with the second part and a, trying to be mindful of my spending to help with the first part.

On Saturday we spent the day with my dad, it's always fun watching waffle and my dad together, they have very similar naughty personalities!! I can just see my dad's brain working when he's egging the pup on! Very funny.

We planned a BBQ, but we're British dah-ling and of course it rained. So we started our summer burger challenge! Dave and I have decided to use the summer to create our own yummy burgers at home and see if we can refine them to something delicious 😋 it was fun and we made a good start!

Today (Sunday) we spent the day with Dave's family. It's so fun, the kids adore their fur-cousin and I'm now curled up with a very sleepy pup in my lap…

We had dinner, a lovely walk and wedding chat. Very pleasant.

Now we're chilling on the sofa, watching Sunday evening tv. This is what weekends are made for!

Dave and I rediscovered our blogs over the weekend. Well, I never really misplaced mine, it’s always been here, silently judging me for my lack of posting and regular start-stop-starts! But I thought now was a good time to try and have another go 😄

Where am I now?

Well, at the grand old age of 34, I’m working on digital marketing for a local professional services firm and the proud owner of a dog, a car and soon to be husband! Yes dear reader, after 14 years together Dave and I are actually going to get married! I couldn’t be happier and there shall be a whole blog post (honest guv!) on The Proposal! (It deserves capitals and bold type!)

Monday-ness

Some random Monday thoughts:

Dizziness is not conducive to screen time but I’m enjoying catching up on my book

M&S BBQ food is really rather good

Puppyhood is a very confusing stage of life for puppy parents – what is that noise you are making for waffle dog?

Winter weddings are great but try not to save all of your holiday for the end of the year, you need a break part way through too.

Last year, I started an instagram challenge, trying to document things that made me happy for 100 days in a row. I didn’t manage the challenge but have decided to give it another go.

So, I thought I would try this again. My friend Manon has just completed the 100 days, and she has encouraged me to join in with her! We’ve come up with a couple of hashtags and mine is going to be #becca100wonderfuldaysover on instagram (my name is @beccus if you want to follow!).

I’ll also try do a round up of some of the images on here every now and then.

I’m hoping that the challenge will encourage me to look for the good in every day, it’s so easy to get caught up in the rubbish of every day that you forget to look for the positive.

I really do suck at this blogging thing! I have all these good intentions when I start out, and then how quickly does it all fall off the radar! So Wednesday currently posts have gone out the window, lets just look at where things are at at the moment!

Watching
We’ve cancelled our sky subscription so are watching a bunch of stuff before it runs out (things we’ve recorded so will lose on our box). We are also currently (I mean literally as I type!) watching live artwork being made on periscope. It’s a phone app that lets you see people’s live casts and our friend Salty has been live casting him doing artwork this weekend. It is amazing and really quite therapeutic to watch! You should check it out.

Daredevil – We’ve watched this Netflix original over the last week or so, I loved it, it was gritty and compelling, but very violent and in some places quite graphic. The guy who plays Matt Murdock is a Brit, he was in Stardust the film (which was filmed in Norwich!)

Pitch Perfect 2 – We had the week off this week and went to see the follow up to Pitch Perfect. I was expecting to walk out feeling a bit disappointed (sequels are never as good!) but this was brilliant!! I really really enjoyed it!

Marvel’s agents of S.H.I.E.L.D – We’ve had this on the box for a while and have been working our way through this weekend. The problem is that we forget what happened previously!!

ReadingI’ve just finished a book called An Ice Cold Grave by Lee Weeks. I’m on the look out for more of hers as I’ve been impressed with the two I’ve read.

I also finished a Debbie Macomber book whilst we were on holiday, but I can’t remember what it was called!

DoingWe’ve had a week off work this week so we’ve had a lovely week of days out, doing little jobs around the house and generally enjoying ourselves.

We went to Thetford Forest on Tuesday and we went for a bike ride. Now, this sounds like nothing particularly interesting… but I haven’t cycled since I was 11! I had a sore bottom and I’m not sure it was for me! But it was actually a lot more enjoyable than I was expecting!

It’s been quite a foodie week, and from a diet perspective less good, but it’s been really lovely. Back on plan from tomorrow 🙂

Last week was national stationery week, and I meant to write about it during the actual week, alas time got away from me and I didn’t really quite know where to start! I thought I’d share some of my favourite pieces of stationery, and why I love them! I’ll start with pens today and share more as time goes on!

PensI love to write and being a lefty I sometimes struggle to find a nice pen that works for me. I found this awesome website, Cult Pens that stocks a huge range of amazing different pens in all sorts of colours. I’ll share links from there but you can buy them elsewhere too. (I wonder if I’ll get through this post without spending lots of pennies!!)

This is a lovely pen to write with and I particularly like the pink colour. It is great for letter writing and doesn’t show through paper, or bleed. I also like that it is disposable, so I don’t have to worry about carrying cartridges around.

This is a great fineliner. I used the black version for the seating plan and invitations for my friends wedding recently. It writes really smoothly and again, no bleeding or leakage. A great value pen and I always have one knocking around in my bag or on my desk.

There is also the Sharpie (seems like an endless number of colours! They retail for £1.10 on Cult Pens).

They are the pen of autographs! But I love them for so many different jobs, writing on plastic, addressing packages, writing on odd surfaces. They are so useful and I don’t know how many colours I have!

Stabilo fineliners come in a huge range of colours, this set retails for £11.99 on Cult Pens.

I have a similar set to this, and it is great for organising my diary and my to do list. They are really very fine and I did try and colour with them but it didn’t really work! Colour makes me happy and being able to organise with it is really helpful.

This is just a selection of some of the lovely pens I use, I jump around from pen to pen and I’m always looking for new ones to try. Do you have a favourite type?

So in order to make myself blog regularly I’ve decided to make this a regular Wednesday feature! For the simple reason that I did it on Wednesday last week.

This week I have been:

WatchingAs well as almost everything we were watching last week (except Masterchef – yay Simon!!) we’ve added in some extra shows:

Peter Kay’s Car Share– We like most things that Peter Kay has done and the first 3 eps of this show were brilliant. We can’t wait for the next one!Suits – We’re watching season 3 of this lawyer based show. Set in NYC (loved it, can’t wait to go back!) This is another netflix show and we’re trying hard not to binge watch it.Revenge – This very silly programme is on E4. It is very soap opera-esque! It is getting even more silly as the series is in it’s 4th season. But very glam and compelling watching.

ReadingLast week I didn’t get very far with my either of the 2 books I was reading. My friend picked up an Alex Kava book for me from the charity shop, so I’ve been reading that. It’s called “The Perfect Evil”. A crime thriller starring Maggie O’Dell, the FBI agent. I’m really enjoying it and everything else I was reading has been dropped in favour of it!

EnjoyingGetting real post! I love getting letters and in the last 2 weeks I’ve had some from Australia and France. Now I need to find some pretty stationery so that I can write back!

It’s been a busy week, and I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday. I’m really looking forward to a long weekend, 3 whole days to chill out a bit and hopefully get a bit of a rest!